


setting: one night, under the stars

by phanetixs



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Dialogue, M/M, florida fic of sorts, sap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 21:08:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11044368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phanetixs/pseuds/phanetixs
Summary: Phil looks up again. “Love, kind sir, is the alignment ofopportunities.”Or, things that were said under NSA satellites, probably.





	setting: one night, under the stars

**Author's Note:**

> s/o to my v nice beta,[djh ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/djh/pseuds/djh), who writes equally nice fics so check her out! also, this is for shezz (who's, as of today, 17, and asleep), H, ravioli and monster bones (all of whom absolutely love my nicknames, amirite) 
> 
> this might be a bit different than what i usually write, but hope it leaves you with nice feelings afterwards :)

 

“Sometimes I can’t believe I met you.”

Dan says, lying down on his back and looking at what he thinks is Andromeda in the Floridian cosmos but could just as well be a NSA satellite spying on British citizens. Probably, he figures. Then again, he _has_ watched Jason Bourne one too many times, so. Also, if the NSA was able to tap into Dan’s early conversations with Phil (one-sided, too many), _they’d_ die of the cringe, really. All the ‘XD’ faces engraved on their tombstones.

And so, he says, under the artificial stars; honest and sincere. “Really, the odds of you actually responding to my tweets were probably one in like a thousand. _You_ got lucky, my friend,” Dan laughs, zones in on his favourite dip on Phil’s nose. The angular shape of his cheekbones, the jut of his bottom lip.

“You do know that tweeting me twice every hour significantly increased your chances, right?” Phil replies, but all smug about it too. Because _he_ got Dan Howell’s attention. The poster boy emo kid from Wokingham.  

“It wasn’t _that_ often,” Dan thinks to say, but Phil’s got his phone out and one search can prove him _way_ wrong. And on several different websites as well. Instead, he focuses on how Phil’s eyes look positively opalescent; light reflecting off his pupils.

Sappy things like these make Dan feel besottedly, ridiculously in love, and it hurts to think of easily this _wouldn’t_ have happened. The past eight years, his entire career, hanging out in Florida with his second family.  

 

As it happens, alternate universes like these make him _insecure._

 

“But, really, though, you could’ve replied to _anyone._ ” Dan looks away. “You. It’s just. _Anyone_ , Phil. And you chose me?”

“Yeah?” Phil says soft and fond, like a conclusion long-written in the swirls of fate and destiny and the mumbo jumbo Dan’s too cynical to believe in. “I’d do it again, in a heartbeat. You know that, don’t you?”

In some other universe, he would scoff, say: _well, bad move, Rambo,_  and watch Phil laugh and shake his head. He’s a bit tired, sad, worried in this one, and so he shuffles a little closer instead. The holiday has drained the fuck out of him. In a good way. Florida is a weird kind of groovy dimension where everyone’s always in beach hats and sunglasses.

By everyone, of course, he means the family.

 _His_ family, they all want him to say now, eight years later.

“Yeah I do,” he finally says. “I’m lucky, aren’t I?”

“I think, regardless of anything, we would’ve found each other,” Phil wonders aloud, wistfulness in his tone.

“How are _you_ of all people so sure, anyway? Mr-Marriage-is- _just_ -a-piece-of-paper,” Dan mocks.

“I’ll have you know, Mum dragged me to talk by some love expert once, somewhere on Deansgate, so I’m practically an expert on the subject.” Dan snorts at the pretentiousness of it all.

“What did you learn then, hit me with it, s-s-senpai.”

Phil looks up again. “Love, kind sir, is the alignment of _opportunities._ ”

“Hmm.” Dan hums in understanding.

“You don’t get it, do you?” Phil asks.

“Nah, try again, please,” Dan smiles.

Phil’s silent for a bit, then nudges his shoulder against Dan’s. “Like, the Moon, for instance. It wouldn’t be there if not for the big giant asteroid that hit the Earth like a gajillion years ago.”

“Your mum’s a gajillion,” Dan jokes because he can’t help it.

Phil wholly ignores the interruption but there’s a small upturn at the corner of his lips. “But then, there were tons of rocks before that, some even planet-sized— like _your_ mum, actually—but this _particular_ rock, Dan, had the right velocity, trajectory. It wasn’t a particularly perfect rock but look what it created. Light and gravity and you and me here looking at it.”

Phil takes hold of his hand.

Dan asks summarily, “You’re comparing me to a _rock_?”

Phil gives him an unimpressed look, like when Dan first put on his expensive potato sack jumper and paraded it around the house. “I _mean_ , like I was saying before, you know—if we hadn’t met online, we would’ve met around Manchester. We would’ve seen each other _somewhere_ , online or not-”

“But I wouldn’t have done YouTube _without_ you, what if I hadn’t gone to Manchester for school, what then-" Dan argues.

“And then, I would eventually see you one day, dimpling and curly-haired across the street walking your shibe or something and I would be just _as_ enraptured with you as I first was, sixth June twenty-oh-nine, first DM to danisnotonfire.”

Dan settles back into Phil’s embrace, easy, feels warmth huddle in the pits of his stomach.

“I believe that whatever the circumstances might’ve been then, we’d still be as happy as we are now together, y’know. Maybe that’s the hopeless optimism in me— or whatever’s left of it, thanks, Dan—but yeah.”

“Sometimes, you’re horrifically sweet, you know that?” Dan says, all fond and happy, grips Phil’s chin between his thumb and index fingers and shakes it lightly. “Thank you for making me stay back here.  _This_ ,” he gestures to the holiday home, to the stars and the trees and Phil, “is more than I could have ever wished for myself.”

And it's true. And they've changed _each other_ , changed  _together,_ which arguably is the best part.

 

Later, a situation exists with Kathryn calling them in to watch some old VHS tapes of Phil half naked during bath time, and another with the skies splitting open and them getting drenched in sudden torrential rain. One more with Phil’s roaming hands and Dan’s fists clenched into the sheets.

And then, he thinks, all realities with Phil would just be extraordinarily  _nice_ in every way, and, so maybe it really doesn’t matter what happens after all.

 

-

 

_Cinta tidak berupa menatap satu sama lain,_

_Tetapi memandang ke luar langit arah yang sama,_

_Kalau aku renung langit itu,_

_Adakah kau begitu juga?_

 

**Author's Note:**

> tbh the malay poem at the end will suck if translated into english so it can mean whatever You want it to mean, i guess 
> 
> i'm on twitter and tumblr @phanetixs, or would appreciate a comment below if you have the time! thanks, have a great day frienderinos


End file.
